Passengers aboard a 23-foot fishing boat watched in awe, Thursday morning, July 19, as an adult great white shark, estimated at 17 feet long, chomped on its buffet: a dead whale carcass floating offshore less than a mile from the San Clemente pier.

The National Geographic-like scene was documented on video by the crew on AllWater Charter out of Dana Point, a private fishing charter that was taking anglers out to sea.

Marc Levine, owner of AllWater Charter, said they first spotted the floating whale at about 10 a.m. “We knew what it was right when we saw it,” he said.

Meanwhile, those aboard a nearby fishing boat reported they had seen a great white shark.

Levine left the area, but another of his charter boats stayed with the whale, and reported the shark had returned — and Levine raced back to see the behemoth.

“It was my first large great white. I grew up working on the water, I’ve spent about 25 years working on the water,” he said. “This was the first big one.”

In the AllWater video, someone can be heard saying “Oh my Lord,” as the shark swims slowly near the boat. “Look at the bite marks on him!” one person says as the shark gets near.

“Unbelievable,” says another voice in the video.

Levine said he saw plenty of juveniles in the six-foot range hanging around Capistrano Beach last summer. But he was waiting for a moment like this.

“It was surreal when I got the first shot of him, or her. It kind of didn’t hit me,” he said. “I kind of blacked out. It was just, an animal that size is not something you see, ever.”

The whale carcass was first reported near the Dana Point Harbor jetty on Tuesday by a captain of Dana Wharf Whale Watching, who contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to Carla Mitroff, photographer for the charter company. On Wednesday, the Pacific Marine Mammal Center attempted a necropsy on the female whale, but was unable to determine a cause of death, before the carcass was hauled out to sea by county Harbor Patrol.

Ryan Lawler, owner of Newport Coastal Adventure, shot down from Newport Harbor to see the shark as soon as he got word that it was off San Clemente on Thursday.

“It had drifted back to the beach, and had a huge shark on it,” Lawler said.

San Clemente State Lifeguards spotted towing a dead whale away from the shoreline, where it was spotted about 3/4 miles from the San Clemente Pier Thursday morning. (Photo Courtesy Ryan Lawler/Newport Coastal Adventure).

Lawler said he believes the deceased whale is a 28-foot juvenile.

“The shark was not that much smaller than the whale,” he said. “It was pretty awesome. I had never seen a shark that big before.” One person described to Lawler the way the shark was tossing around the whale “like a rag doll.”

A dead whale spotted about 3/4 miles from the San Clemente Pier Thursday morning, where it was getting eaten by a 17-19 foot great white shark (Photo Courtesy Ryan Lawler/Newport Coastal Adventure).

San Clemente Marine Safety Officer Ian Burton said lifeguards were alerted to the whale carcass early Thursday morning by Pacific Marine Mammal Center. They were also contacted by the NOAA Stranding Network. He said he’ll have to get more accounts of the shark activity and watch video before determining any action that might be needed by lifeguards, but “there’s always safety concerns.”

There’s also no word on whether the presence of the large shark will impact the Ocean Festival set for Saturday and Sunday in San Clemente.

Ralph Collier, founder of the Shark Research Committee, said it’s most likely the shark will be too full to care about humans after its feast.

“They can always leave the whale satiated and full and they’ll just cruise around and they might cruse by the shoreline. Or they will go to deeper water and that will be that,” he said. “Their attention is going to be on the whale. They are worried about that.

“It looks like a good size little critter,” he said.

Collier was especially interested in scarring on the shark’s head, which could have been from a conflict with other sharks to be the alpha during the feast.

“When it raises its head, you can see the white scrapes,” he said, noting that they looked fresh on the video. “They could be upper teeth from another white shark. They establish hierarchy when they come upon something like this.”

It’s not unusual to have three to five sharks hanging around trying to get part of the meal, he said. But the others most of the time won’t feed until the dominant one moves away for a break.

Likewise, he said, it’s not unusual for a shark of this size to be so close to shore.

“I’ve seen 17-foot white sharks on the other side of surf breaks,” he said. “This one is definitely an adult,” he added.

Collier said great whites off California generally run from 800 to 1,000 pounds heavier than sharks found in other areas of the world, in part because there’s such a plentiful buffet of pinnipeds off the coast.

He recalls a dead blue whale in the mid-2000s that was buried at San Onofre trails, drawing large sharks to the area.

“I stood on the cliff and watched adult sharks coming in from a half a mile out,” he said. “You could see the slick from the decomposing whale when the tide was coming in … you could just see the sharks following it to the beach. They’d get as close as they could get to shore, swimming back and forth.”

Dealing with dead whales is no easy task. In 2016, a dead whale washed up at a popular surf spot, Lower Trestles, where it had to be chopped to pieces and hauled to a landfill.

Lawler, of Newport Coastal Adventure, said he followed the lifeguards Thursday as they hauled the whale about 17 miles offshore, and saw no sign of the shark. The lifeguards then handed the whale off to a tow boat company to take it further away.

For Lawler, an avid fisherman, the shark sighting was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“It’s been something I’ve been waiting for my whole life,” he said. “We have all never seen this before, and this is our job. We are on the water every day.”

A massive great white shark, thought to be anywhere from 16 to 19 feet long, was spotted off the coast of Orange County eating a dead whale less than a mile from the San Clemente Pier. (COURTESY OF NEWPORT COASTAL ADVENTURE)

More in California News

"I fully support the principles behind Senate Bill 1: to defeat efforts by the president and Congress to undermine vital federal protections that protect clean air, clean water and endangered species," Newsom said in a written statement.

Attorneys for eight drug distributors, pharmacies and retailers facing trial next month for their roles in the opioid crisis want to disqualify the federal judge overseeing their cases, saying he has shown bias in his effort to obtain a multibillion-dollar global settlement.